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Thursday, May 15, 2014

Here it is: The third and final instalment of the free-three-chapters I'm putting out from my first book. If you like it, go ahead and get the book on Flipkart here. The Kindle version is available here. It's a laugh riot, I assure you. If you don't laugh throughout the book, you get your money back. Just send me a recording of your reading the entire book as proof.

3
I Saw the Sign
I watched Vijay walk out of the Arrivals terminal, unaware
of my presence. His dark brown hair glinted in the harsh
airport lights and he was simply dressed in a blue long-sleeved
shirt and a pair of black pants – one of the three decent pairs
that he possessed. He slid along gracefully, almost gliding
and as always, he gave me the distinct impression of being
a giraffe on skates, but one who had been practising with
great dedication for years for some sort of championship. He
looked like he was just out of college – the one and only
thing that he had ever displayed any sort of vanity about.
It was only because I was observing him closely that
I noted that as usual, his brown eyes were not steady but
shifting about at lightning speed. He had once told me that
the reason he was able to drive so well was that his eyes were
never still and he was constantly looking about all over the
place and was very aware of his surroundings. Of course, I
started calling him shifty-eyes after that, although this rapid
eye movement was barely perceptible to the naked eye of other mortals. Sure enough, those shifty eyes now cut through the
colourful confusion of the airport and settled on me, even
though he hadn’t been expecting me. He smiled and raised
his hand slightly in a cautious wave. Unlike me, he was always
wary of public displays of affection. Still, for me, that little
wave was sufficient to cause another tiny skip in the cardiac
region and I hurried towards him.

We greeted each other with a hug, warm on my part and
hurried on his, as he simultaneously tried to register exactly
who in the crowd of strangers was watching us. We held
hands as we walked along and I started to talk about some
inane things while he steered me towards his waiting taxi. I
was still chattering happily in the car, when I noticed that he
hadn’t said very much and was watching me in a bemused
manner.
‘What?’ I asked warily.
‘Nothing. I was just wondering if you’ve thought about
it some more.’
I started to observe the scenery outside the window and
said coldly, ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
I knew exactly what he was talking about. And he knew
that I knew. And I knew that he knew that I knew. This
was getting slightly complex, so I was glad when he cut into
my thoughts with ‘Oh come on, honey. How much do you
think we’ll be able to put it off anyway?’
This was too much. ‘You’re rushing me, Vijay. It’s too soon
for anyone to make such a big decision.’
‘Arrey! But I’ve decided, na? I want to marry you only. So
why would it take you much longer?’
‘Because ... I’m just not ready.’
‘And when will you be ready?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly.

Honesty is rarely rewarded in this world.
‘What do you mean you don’t know? And how will you
know you’re ready, by the way?’
I decided to adlib. ‘It’s one of those things, Vijay. You
just know. I’m sure I’ll just know. But please give me time.’
I preempted his next question with ‘At least a few more
months, maybe one year.’
His face fell. I knew that this would be tough for him to
digest, but I had to buy myself more time. A year wasn’t that
long. I heard him mutter, half to himself, ‘I love you but I’m
not really sure I want to marry you ... I don’t understand this
thinking ... is it supposed to be very modern or something ...
aaj kal ki ladkiyan ...’
Sometimes Vijay acted like he was not only from another
planet but another generation altogether. This only served
to strengthen my resolve that I would wait for a long time
before making any sort of commitment.
He stopped talking about it, clearly having decided not
to pursue the matter any further. Instead, he rolled down his
window and produced a cigarette. I watched incredulously as
he lit up in front of me, knowing fully well that I absolutely
abhorred his smoking. I decided to give him the royal ignore,
which would probably have worked well if he hadn’t started
giving it to me first, and turned away from him to look out
the window. The taxi was crawling along in the traffic – it
would have been quicker to walk.
As we sat there in a moody, smoky silence, I thought
bitterly that maybe it would even take two years before I
knew I was ready.
Three months had clearly not been enough, in any case.
My mind began to wander over the various small incidents
that had taken place over the past few months.

Unlike Vijay’s pretence of being some sort of champion solo
drummer in college in a lame bid to impress me, I had always
let him see the real me. Take it or leave it types.
The only time I had stretched the truth slightly was one
morning when he said that he had to go out for a haircut.
Since we were at that happy lover’s stage where every minute
apart is seen as a minute wasted, I told him that I was great
at cutting people’s hair.
‘Really?’ he asked and I replied that I had been quite
the lady in demand when it came to haircuts in my earlier
days.
What I omitted to mention to him was that I had been in
demand one day when I was ten years old – and that it was
only my mother who was demanding to know where I was
hiding, after a rather unfortunate haircut that I had given
my younger sister. The result had come out rather uneven,
although I stoutly maintained that I had intended it that way
and that I quite liked it. As I had crouched in the cupboard
of my room, listening to my little sister’s inconsolable wailing
and my mother shouting for me, I had understood even
at that early age, that I was destined to be something of a
misunderstood genius.
After hearing about my supposed expertise with the
scissors, Vijay eagerly asked me to give him a cool haircut.
I said, with an appealing combination of generosity and
modesty, ‘Sure, why not?’
He sat on a tall stool in the bathroom and I assumed
a professional stance behind him. He was gazing into the
mirror so I didn’t dare to touch the front much, but I snipped
away happily at the back, pausing to admire the effect
now and then. I gave him an attractive series of about five
steps on the back of his head. He couldn’t see it, but when he reached back to touch it, he said it ‘felt nice’ and that he
had never had this kind of haircut before.

He went happily to office the next day, clearly expecting
some admiration for his new haircut, but the general reaction
was summed up for him by an unnecessarily outspoken
colleague who informed him that it looked as if ‘kisi billi ne
noch-noch ke baal nikaale hain.’ Vijay was not very amused
by this and over the next few days in office, could not keep
from self-consciously covering the back of his head with his
hand. To my chagrin, he never let me come near his hair
again, even when I offered to ‘fix it by snipping a bit off the
back and evening out the layers.’
Our different temperaments also resulted in many fights.
Given his tendency to make silly wisecracks and say whatever
he felt like all the time, I often flared up about something
that he did or said.
At the time, Vijay’s elder brother Ajay and his wife Garima
were living with Vijay and I got along well with them. They
had been witnesses to quite a few of our fights, which usually
ended in my flouncing out of the house. I discovered that
they usually took my side, especially Ajay, who would always
explain to Vijay, ‘Tu bada hain. Tujhe samajhna chahiye.’
Quite sweet of him, I thought, and my heart would warm to
Ajay when Vijay reported this to me.
One late night, Garima found Vijay sitting on the balcony
of the flat, staring forlornly at the children’s playground
below. When she asked what he was doing, he pointed to a
lone figure sitting on one of the children’s swings and said,
‘Yashodhara. She’s angry with me again.’
Garima breathed, ‘Oh how sweeeeet.’ Vijay stared at
her in incredulous annoyance. It was anything but sweet,
according to him.

It had all started with a casual remark he made about one
of my favourite kurtas – an ethnic looking black-and-yellow
long-sleeved, beaded number that I often wore with my
jeans. I had always been under the impression that I looked
really cool in it, but Vijay had lovingly asked me, with no
small degree of interest, while toying with the beads, ‘Tell
me, na – why do you always wear this Hare-Rama-Hare-
Krishna kind of stuff?’
It was all downhill from there and ended with my walking
out of the house in a huff.
Not having any place to go so late at night, I headed
to the playground, thinking that I would console myself
with a little swing. A few minutes passed and I was sniffing
and feeling very sorry for myself when Vijay suddenly
materialized out of the black night, holding two Orange
Bar ice lollies, one of which he held out to me. I took it
without a word and he sat on the swing next to me with
the other ice lolly, saying, ‘Garima said we fight like kids, so
we should make up like kids too.’ We ate our ice lollies on
the swings in philosophical silence and went back upstairs
after a while.
He rarely lost his composure. Only once, when I had
started getting upset about some small thing, he had
announced, ‘I’m telling you, I don’t know how to deal
with such tamper tentrums.’ It was then that I discovered
his tendency to lose his already tenuous command over
the English language in moments of high emotion. He
kept repeating the phrase ‘tamper tentrums’, obviously
not spotting any flaw in it, until I finally melted and
broke down in a fit of laughter. He thought I had lost it
until I breathlessly explained to him why I was laughing.
Thereafter, we often used the words ‘tamper tentrum’ to

try and lighten the most unpleasant moments of conflict.
Sometimes it worked.
As our taxi pulled to a stop, I briefly debated with myself
whether to try and use this phrase to lighten the mood, but
decided against it. The blatant smoking in my face was really
the limit. Maybe, I thought as I moodily slammed the cab
door behind me and stomped towards his flat, it would take
me three years to decide. Who knew?
We had a quiet dinner at his place with Ajay and Garima. We
routed most of our conversation through that hapless couple,
addressing each other only a few times with exaggerated and
dangerous politeness. Once in our room, we simply turned
our backs on each other. I was only pretending to be asleep
– I really wanted to talk to him and make up but just as
I finally turned around to do so, he let out a gentle snore.
I tried to shake him awake and whispered with increasing
loudness, ‘Vijay. VIJAY!’ but he was out like a light. Irritated,
I turned my back on him again and grumbling to myself,
tried to go to sleep. It took me a long time.
I woke up late the next morning, the bright sunlight
hurting my eyes. I licked my dry lips and realized that I
was feeling very sick. It was probably my lunch of leftover
Maggi and chips the previous day that had done me in,
because my stomach was hurting terribly and I felt nauseous
and weak.
This was the first occasion in the past few months that
I had fallen sick and so I had not yet discovered Vijay’s
weakness for tending to the sick. He immediately forgot all
about our differences of the previous day and started to fuss
over me in a way that even my mother had never done.
He asked me whether I wanted to eat something and I replied in the negative – I was feeling too sick and didn’t
think I would be able to keep anything down.

‘But how will you regain your strength if you don’t eat?’
he chided.
It was kind of cute at first, but then it started to get a bit
out of hand. I insisted that all I wanted to do was go to sleep,
but he kept fussing over me and suggesting that I eat or drink
this or that and started measuring my temperature at fifteen-
minute intervals. I just lay in bed with a thermometer in my
mouth, while he pottered about with an enthusiasm that he
had hitherto not displayed. To my horror, he even declared
that he was planning to take off from work the next day –
Monday – in order to nurse me back to perfect health.
He kept coming up with new and inventive ways to fuss,
but it was clearly in the matter of nourishment that he felt
he had found his specialization because he kept offering me
all the food and drink in the house, until I finally agreed that
maybe I would try something after all.
Thrilled by this first sign of success, he made me drink a
huge mug of chocolate milk, reasoning that ‘milk is generally
good for health’ and ‘even if you don’t eat something, it’s
important for you to drink and keep your fluid levels right.’
My condition showed no visible improvement. In fact,
my stomach felt significantly worse after the milk, leaving
me groaning and clutching my belly in agony – until he
made me sit up in bed and consume a large bowl of papaya.
‘I know papaya is really good for the tummy, my mother said
so.’ Against my better judgment, I somehow gulped down
the pulpy fruit. I had never liked papaya and now started to
feel even more queasy.
‘You’re feeling queasy?’ He had the remedy for this too.
He grated some ginger and asked me to chew on it, assuring me that this would make me feel better instantly. If there
was anything I disliked more than papaya, it was the taste of
ginger, but I was too weak to protest and began to chew on
it with an air of resignation.

The wave of nausea that overcame me right after this was
too strong to resist, though I gathered up enough strength to
lurch towards the bathroom. I began to throw up violently
into the toilet. In between bouts, I became aware that the
very concerned Vijay was standing behind me and trying to
help me throw up. Weakly, I tried to push him out and shut
the door behind him, but he insisted on holding me up over
the toilet seat, running one hand over my hair to keep it out
of the way. After I finally finished throwing up, I stumbled
towards the washbasin and started cleaning up. When I
looked up, I caught a glimpse of both of us in the mirror.
I took in my own appearance first – I looked completely
washed out, my face pale, hair matted and oily and eyes red
and watering. Repulsive was the word that I would have used
to describe myself.
Then I caught sight of Vijay in the mirror. He was gazing
at the back of my head, still stroking my hair affectionately
and muttering in self-reproach, ‘Oh yaar ... it’s my fault ...
I should have added some lemon juice to the ginger. That
would have worked ... come on, I’ll make you some nimbu
paani, okay?’
It was then, at that exact moment, that I knew.
I drew in a deep breath and my words came out with the
slow exhalation. ‘Okay ... let’s do it.’
‘Okay?’ he said with the same undue enthusiasm. ‘Okay,
you wait, I’ll get it ...’
‘NOT the nimbu paani, you dumbo ...’ I hissed. ‘Okay,
as in ... okay, let’s just get married.’ ***End of Chapter***
Go get the book on Flipkart here.
The Kindle version is available here.

Vijay was due back in Bangalore later the same day, at
8 p.m. It was about 7 p.m. when it struck me that it would
be nice to surprise him by going to the airport to pick him
up. I realized with a little start of guilt that every single time
in the last three months that I’d had to travel on work, he
had picked me up or dropped me off at the airport – whereas
it had occurred to me only now, for the first time, that I
could pick him up too. Especially since my guest house,
strategically chosen at a mere stone’s throw from his house,
was also fortuitously located a short distance away from the
airport. But my sense of remorse was quickly overtaken by
resentment. Just because I was an innately selfish person

Just Married, Please Excuse 11
– a fact that I immediately decided to blame on my faulty
upbringing by my mother – it didn’t mean that Vijay could
go about always playing Mister Nice Guy and being all
thoughtful about every little thing and making me look bad
in comparison. It hit me that being cooped up in my guest
house, waiting for Vijay to come back, had quite possibly
addled my brain. A breath of fresh air would do me some
good.
I was still in a contemplative mood as I slouched along
Airport Road. Maybe Vijay’s acting all thoughtful and gallant
was a scheme to trap me into marriage. Maybe he would
start acting completely different once we got hitched. Well,
I wasn’t just some naïve silly girl. I was a savvy woman of the
world – and I wasn’t going to fall into any sort of trap.
I was so wrapped up in my thoughts that I stumbled on
a loose slab on the pavement and nearly fell into an open
manhole. After loudly cursing the civic authorities of Bangalore,
I was reminded of how I had already demonstrated my clumsy
side to Vijay on various occasions and had been saved at least
twice from a sudden and imminent death on a busy road by
his long, steadying arm. It was kind of nice to be with a man
who continued to think of me as hot stuff despite prolonged
exposure to my klutziness. Besides, my own personal survival
rate would possibly improve simply by virtue of having that
long, steadying arm around me. These were no doubt fairly
useful qualities to have in a potential husband.
Husband. Ewww.
I finally reached the entry gate to the airport and
negotiated my way past the many vehicles moving at a
mere crawl, until I found myself at the Arrival gate. It was
crowded to the hilt, as usual. I cleared my throat, tossed
my hair back and gave a few of the local men haughty looks until they meekly shuffled aside. I then proceeded to
occupy a prime waiting spot near the front where I could
comfortably lean on the steel bars as I waited for Vijay to
make his appearance.

It was still fifteen minutes to eight. I found my mind
beginning to wander again as I waited moodily, my baggy-
jeaned skinny frame hunched over the bars.
Had it really been three months already? It seemed like
only yesterday that we had gone out on our very first date.
When Vijay first suggested that we go out that fateful day,
he did so in a deliberately casual manner. Determined to
outdo him, I accepted in a manner bordering on careless
indifference.
‘Oh sure. Whatever. I mean, I don’t care.’ For good
measure, I even added something along the lines of ‘I go out
with anyone who asks me.’
He looked at me appraisingly and I realized this hadn’t
sounded too good, so I deftly changed the subject. ‘So where
do you think we should go?’
He thought for a while and then, with a gleam in his
brown eyes, he asked me, ‘Would you like to see ducks?’
This was a question I had never been asked before, but I
decided to just go with the flow and said in the same casual
manner, ‘Yes, of course.’
That afternoon, I found myself getting a little worried.
I had no idea what to expect and was vaguely apprehensive
that ‘seeing ducks’ was perhaps some sort of secret code for
acts I was not yet ready for – or even worse, that he might be
planning to take me to the Bangalore zoo.
That evening he picked me up from my guest house.
I walked up to his car, a dark green Hyundai Accent. As I got in, he said, ‘Hey, you’re looking nice.’ I was congratulating
myself for the wise but unusual decision of wearing a skirt
and applying some lipstick when he added, ‘Nicer than you
usually look.’ My smile froze on my face, but he looked like
he hadn’t noticed anything amiss. I would learn later that
Vijay usually said whatever popped into his head. This was
always without any malice whatsoever, but still difficult for
a slightly oversensitive person, like me, to digest. Right now,
however, he appeared to be in a very happy, conversational
mood, and I melted as it dawned on me that he was talking
about making this a very special first date – he was planning
to drive us two hours out of Bangalore to ‘see ducks’ at a little
resort right on the Cauveri river. I settled back in my seat
with a delicious feeling of anticipation, put on my seat belt
and we zoomed off.

Vijay was a very skilled driver, at least as far as I could tell,
with my own limited knowledge of the matter. He negotiated
the city traffic with great speed and nonchalance, humming
tunelessly to himself when he wasn’t keeping the conversation
going and swerving out of the way of oncoming buses just
in the nick of time. I tried to play it cool too, restricting my
display of horror to a few sharp intakes of breath whenever it
looked like we were going to perish, which he did not seem to
notice. Thankfully, we were soon out of the city and headed
along some quieter country roads leading towards Mysore.
Our destination was about mid-way between Mysore and
Bangalore, a resort called Amblee.
We finally reached and I was quite delighted by my first
glimpse of the quiet, scenic place. It did give the impression
of being rather dilapidated and I was dimly aware that at least
part of its charm at the moment was the lack of sunlight, but
for now, it was quite perfect.

The promised ducks were indeed there – all four of them
– in a murky little pond in the resort gardens. After paying
our respects to them, we proceeded to a table set by the
river that sparkled in the moonlight. There was absolutely
nobody else around and we were having a pleasant, quiet
conversation and getting to know each other better.
Therefore, I was taken aback when after a comfortable lull,
Vijay leaned over, looked me in the eye and said, ‘Naam
hain Vijay ... Deenanath ... Chauhan. Maalum?’
I had not the slightest interest in Hindi cinema till I met
Vijay. Obviously, therefore, I did not know that this was
a dialogue from the movie Agneepath, and that Vijay was
trying to impress me with what he thought was an uncanny
imitation of Amitabh Bachchan. I only wondered why he
was suddenly whispering in a voice two octaves lower than
usual. Out loud, I just politely remarked that I had always
thought his last name was Sharma, not Chauhan, adding
that Deenanath was a very interesting middle name, if a little
old-fashioned. He was a bit demoralized by my reaction,
but when he explained to me what he had been trying to
do, I pretended that I had just been kidding and praised
him for his unmistakable impression, possibly overdoing it
a bit by saying he ‘actually sounded more like Amitabh than
Amitabh himself.’
After we finished our otherwise uneventful, peaceful
dinner, Vijay announced that he had organized for us to
do some fishing, a thought that I was quite excited by. We
settled ourselves comfortably on the cool stone steps leading
into the river and a friendly resort bhaiiya handed us our
extremely makeshift fishing rods – which were actually
two thin bamboo sticks with strings, on the ends of which
dangled little hooks wrapped in bits of atta.

There we sat, the two of us, holding our charming and
only slightly sad little fishing rods, and the conversation now
took a more serious turn as we quietly exchanged our many
divergent views on the world at large.
It was clear that despite our mutual attraction, we had
many differences – he referred to himself as a ‘simple man’
and was easy-going, good-humoured and even-tempered.
He also was a small-town boy, had been brought up as part
of a conservative family in Jaipur and had a distinctly desi
flavour. I, on the other hand, was a ‘modern’ Delhi girl who
had always had a bit of a hot temper and clearly favoured
Alanis over Amitabh.
He had just finished telling me about how he had always
been told that he was one of the calmest and most centred
people around, when he suddenly felt a tug on his fishing
rod.
‘BHAIIYA! BHAIIYA!’ His sudden panicked screams
shattered the stillness of the night. I asked him to calm
down, but he babbled on rather incoherently about being
a brahmin and a vegetarian and how he had never thought
these sticks would ever catch a fish and that he wanted to
throw it back but couldn’t bring himself to touch it and
anyway, he was afraid it would bite him and it looked so
awful struggling there like that and so on. The friendly
resort bhaiiya came back and laughingly rescued Vijay from
the fish, tossing the latter back into the river whereupon it
indignantly swam away. Vijay shuddered and said we should
head back into town.
And that was our first date.
I was amused by this memory as I stood waiting for Vijay
at the airport and couldn’t stop chuckling throatily while shaking my head from side to side, causing a couple of the
local men standing around me to edge away warily.

What were we thinking? We were so different – it would
never work. And yet, here we were, carrying on regardless.
What was the point? What for?
And then I spotted a lanky figure that stood out head and
shoulders above the rest of the crowd and my heart skipped
a beat. And I suddenly remembered what for. *** End of Chapter ***
Click to buy the bookhere at Flipkart. And here for the Kindle version on Amazon here! Thanks for the support, you guys. Love having a blog!
Also read: Chapter 1 and Chapter 3

Thursday, May 8, 2014

And today, I've decided to publish a few chapters from my books on the blog over the next few weeks, with the permission of my kind publisher, HarperCollins India.

If you enjoy this, You can buy Just Married, Please Excuse on Flipkart here. And If you're into e-reading, here's the Kindle version. Enjoy!

1
Pop Goes the Question
‘Achha, I’ve been meaning to ask you,’ Vijay said casually
over the phone. ‘When do you think we should get
married?’
The question caught me off guard since the only build
up to it had been our wishing each other a rather soppy,
lovey-dovey good morning. I paused for a moment to give it
a considered response.
‘Eh?’
I was never at my eloquent best when taken by surprise.
I looked at my phone with raised eyebrows as though Vijay could see my questioning expression. Considering that we had
been seeing each other for only three months and that I was in
my early twenties and just out of management college, I was
completely unprepared for even the mention of marriage. But
here it was – an unmistakable, undeniable, definite mention.‘Married?’ I choked out the words with some difficulty.
‘Ha ha! You’re joking, right? I’m only twenty-three – a mere
child. You want to be held directly responsible for child
marriage? No, na?’
I heard a by-now familiar stifled sigh at the other end of
the line. ‘Honey, mujhe pata hain you’re twenty-three. But
I’m thirty and I can only hold my parents off for so long. You
know they’re starting to look for arranged marriage matches
for me. Again.’

I did know this and didn’t particularly like it. I became
petulant. ‘So tell them to butt out. Or maybe,’ I added
spitefully, ‘you should just go and marry some Harbinder or
Buntvinder that they choose for you.’

‘Buntvinder?’ he chuckled. ‘That’s not even a real name.
But tumhare liye achha hain, actually – my little Buntvinder.
Ha ha.’
He sensed I was not amused and his voice became serious
again. ‘Look, we are eventually getting married, right? So
why not now?’
‘Vijay! We’ve only been going out for three months ...’
‘Arrey! I’m old-fashioned ... I don’t understand all this
going-out, shoing-out stuff. I thought you were as serious
about it as I am.’
‘Of course I am as serious about it as you are. I just didn’t
know that you were so ... serious!’
This time, his sigh was not as stifled as the previous one.
‘Okay then. I guess we’ll talk about it some other time. See
you in the evening.’
Exchanging goodbyes that were a little colder than usual,
we hung up and I flopped my head back onto my pillow. I
was definitely not prepared for a discussion like this. Besides,
it was one of those beautiful chilly Saturday mornings in
Bangalore which are best spent lazing in bed. So although it
was already 9 a.m., I had still been in the process of waking
up when Vijay called. He, on the other hand, had taken the
early morning flight for a day-trip to Delhi and had already
been up for about five hours before he called me. He thus
had the unfair advantage of a fresh and alert mind.
I realized that I wasn’t going to be able to sleep now
anyway and thought I might as well make some sort of an
attempt to get out of bed. I looked around the sparse room of the company guest house in which I was staying and decided
it wasn’t even worth trying to get the so-called caretaker to
make me a nice refreshing cup of tea. That dude was even
grumpier than I was in the mornings. Despite the severe
handicap of no tea, I bravely managed to push myself out
of bed and spread my arms wide and yawned, indulging in a
long, slow stretch. It looked like it would be an empty sort of
day – a Saturday without Vijay was no fun.

Yeah, but still ... twenty-three, I reminded myself, was
just too young to get married.
I briefly considered telling myself that perhaps I was
actually very mature for my age, but then rejected that on the
grounds that it was a blatant lie. I definitely wasn’t ready.
How did you know you were ready, anyway?
In any case, I wasn’t altogether convinced I was the
marrying type at all. I’d always liked to think of myself as
a bit of a wild, free spirit. And right now, I had most of
that beautiful decade – my twenties – ahead of me. Full of
possibilities for adventure, exploration, thrills and – who
knew, I thought a bit fancifully, maybe even a spot of danger.
All this, notwithstanding the fact that I had just finished my
MBA and entered the corporate world, as an employee in a
large, staid MNC. Still. There could be some form of danger
while peddling soaps and detergents.
But the only danger now seemed to be of getting trapped
in a domestic rut and becoming a house-minding, wifely
Buntvinder myself. The self-image that this conjured up
in my mind inspired me to immediately start the day with
a workout. And so I lay down and began to practise some
contortions I had seen on the Yoga DVD I had obtained
about a month ago from my mother. Even while I struggled
to breathe correctly – or rather, to just breathe – during the dhanurasana, sarvangasana and other assorted asanas, I
couldn’t get our conversation out of my mind.

I knew that Vijay’s parents had heard nothing of my
existence. They had been pressurizing him to get married for
a while now and had been lining up ‘meetings’ with nice girls
from respectable families all over the country, but mostly
from his hometown of Jaipur. ‘At least just meet her’ was
their constant refrain. To oblige them, sometimes he did.
I had discovered that even before I had come into his life
a few months ago, Vijay had found his own unique, rather
intriguing way of getting his parents to ease up on the topic,
if only temporarily.
He would simply get himself rejected.
It was quite a feat for him to get rejected – tall, good-
looking, IIT-Delhi graduate from respectable brahmin family,
working in large MNC and all that jazz. Still, he manfully
rose to the task and achieved it through the simple means of
being obnoxious.
During each of these meetings, there would inevitably
come a point when he and the girl were left alone to get
to know each other better. He would act normal enough to
begin with. Then, at some stage, he would clear his throat,
look deep into her eyes and say in a low, serious voice, ‘Look,
Buntvinder (example of name). Before we think about
whether we should take things any further, there is something
I have to ask you.’
She would lower her eyes and reply breathlessly, ‘Go
ahead.’
‘It’s something very deeply personal, and I’ll understand if
you don’t want to answer it.’
‘It’s okay, you can ask me.’
‘It’s just that for me – and I hope for you – marriage is not a thing to be taken lightly. So I really need to know
this ...’

She would be very nervous by now, but would steel herself
in preparation for the worst. ‘It’s okay, Vijay! What is it you
want to know?’
‘I just need to know,’ he would lower his voice even
further and after a dramatic pause for effect, say, ‘Who was
the first Mughal emperor of India?’
The ensuing silence would only be broken by the sound
of his loud guffaws at the look on her face. The responses
ranged from huffy walk-outs to cushions thrown at his head.
Either way, the girl would get the message that this wasn’t a
suitable boy, although the parents involved were never sure
exactly why.
Being an easygoing and open-minded sort of chap, Vijay
was not opposed to introducing a variation once in a while.
As in the case of the overly sweet and sensitive young girl that
he met in Jaipur, whom he didn’t have the heart to try the
usual Mughal emperor prank on.
Instead, after around twenty minutes of conversation –
nervous and shy on her part, friendly and encouraging on his
– he sidled up to her, making her back further into the sofa
they were sitting on. He gazed into her eyes and murmured,
‘You are one of the sweetest girls I have ever met in my life.’
As she blushed in flustered confusion at this unexpected
display of forwardness, he put his arm around her shoulders
and whispered in her ear, ‘And don’t worry, I will personally
find a nice boy for you.’
The poor girl was in tears by the time he left. Finally,
his parents had eased up on the match-fixing efforts. Only
temporarily, of course.

When I first saw Vijay in the office three months earlier, my
first thought had been, ‘Wow, that guy has long legs – where
do they make pants his size?’ He was a tall, lanky young man
with smooth hair and a boyish-looking face that belied his
thirty years.
I was only a lowly management trainee, fresh out of
IIM-Bangalore, and Vijay had been in the organization for
several years. We both worked in the marketing department,
and had been introduced by his boss Madhukar, who also
happened to be my project guide. I was impressed by Vijay
from the beginning – that is, I thought he was cute. I liked
him even more when I got to know him better and found
that he was a laid-back, down-to-earth young man, with
an extremely quirky sense of humour. He stood out in the
corporate environment – literally, because at six foot two, he
also towered over most other people.
The office campus was a beautiful one. It was built over
a very large area of land on the outskirts of Bangalore, with
plenty of greenery around. The building itself was a quaint
old structure and from the outside was more reminiscent
of an ancient castle than a modern office. You would enter
through large ornate doors into a spacious lobby, upon the
walls of which hung some great works of art – priceless pieces
by M.F. Hussain and the like. There was even an impressive
bronze statue of a raging bull, bang in the centre of the
lobby. The fact that it faced away from the lobby entrance,
and therefore you had a bull’s backside greeting you every
morning as you entered the office, did little to detract from
the timeless charm of the building.
So, this was where we first met. Where our little romance
started. Where we took many after-lunch strolls around the
campus. Where I once caught a glimpse of Vijay sitting at the large window of his ground-floor room, gazing outside in deep
thought, immersed in what was probably some important
business problem. I had watched him admiringly for a few
moments, thinking how picturesque the scene was, and
trying to come up with an appropriate title for it in my head,
something like ‘Long-legged Professional Contemplation’.
Exactly at this point, the object of my scrutiny had coolly
swung his legs over the sill and slipped out of the office in one
smooth motion, presumably for a smoke. I was taken aback by
his exiting in such a novel fashion and had thought for the first
time – but certainly not the last, ‘Man. That dude is weird.’

Later, I asked him out of curiosity what he thought when
he first met me. He replied spontaneously – a bad habit he
would soon learn to curb to some extent – ‘I thought, Arrey
yaar, here’s yet another trainee to waste my time – but she’s a
rather cute jhalli.’
I didn’t really know at the time what the term ‘jhalli’ meant,
but I could sense it wasn’t anything very complimentary.
Vijay never offered compliments unless they were double-
edged – part of his charm, I supposed.
He had done his share of stretching the truth to try and
impress me. When he learnt that I was into music and playing
the guitar, he said casually, ‘Oh really? You know, I played the
drums in college.’
This greatly raised him in my esteem. It was only later
that I discovered that he had been referring to one specific
occasion ten years ago when he had happened to pass by the
auditorium, seen the IIT rock band members taking a break
during practice and had banged about a bit on their drum set
for a pleasant five minutes.
He also mentioned that he had been on the college
volleyball and basketball teams – this was easy to believe,given his height, and later turned out to have the plus point
of being true as well. When it finally hit me that he was
giving me all this information in order to try and flirt with
me in his own unique, subtle and slightly sardonic way, I was
quite floored – here was a musical, athletic, handsome and
nice older man who seemed intent on winning me over. It
had seemed too good to be true.

And clearly, I now thought a tad bitterly as I struggled to
unravel myself from a particularly complicated asana whose
name I could no longer recall, it had indeed turned out to be
too good to be true.
The lad was already talking marriage. Talk about killing a
perfectly good romance.

Typical. ******* End of Chapter****Liked it? I hope so :)...Stay tuned for more. But if this has whetted your appetite enough, why wait? Get the book now - on Flipkarthere, or on Amazon for theKindle version. Or, yes, just your regular neighbourhood bookstore! And here's something else. If you don't find it there and can let me know at yashodhara dot lal at gmail dot com, I will send you a copy myself, after verifying through the publisher sales team. For 3 people who write to me after verification- to be announced May 20th. Cool?Also read: Chapter 2 and Chapter 3

Tuesday, May 6, 2014

Rejoice! For you now get to know my friend, the lovely Kiran Manral, who is a fellow author and all-round wonderful person. Also, go ahead and get yourself her new book 'Once Upon a Crush'!

Y: Kiran, Tell me the various things you do!

K: I sleep a lot, read a lot and write a lot. Though, if you ask my son, it would be I eat a lot and shout a lot. I write blogs, I write books, I do freelance feature writing. I also spend an inordinately large amount of time on twitter, which I would earlier be consumed by guilt and think TimeWaste TimeWaste in flashing neon lights in my head, but now realise has been a terribly fun way to meet the most interesting people without taking butt out of seat.Seriously though, I am part of two social media awareness initiatives called Child Sexual Abuse Awareness and Violence Against Women Awareness which run in April and October every year, and I am rather chuffed about these.

Y: Tell us how you manage it all... (because people always want to know!)

K: I do no housework or cooking. So having got that out of the way, there's plenty of time to do all that one wants to. Luckily I live with my mother in law who looks after all matters domestic and the brat on days I need to work late, so that's been an immense support. And then there is the little matter of obsessive list making. Every night I make lists of what is to be done the next day and ensure I work through that list in the course of the day.

Y: What about your books? Tell us a bit about the process of writing them, too.

K: The two books which are out are quick, fun reads. Humour. I have written one rather grim one, and am in the process of writing a grimmer one. Also, I write the way I read, with multiple books by my bedside and multiple half finished manuscripts in my computer. The latest one was actually written almost at the same time The Reluctant Detective was written, and has been through various drafts and versions and tangents until it is finally here in ink and paper. I write in two distinct ways I find. The fun novels, I plot out chapter wise and then fill up the chapters as I go along. The longer, grimmer ones write themselves. I have no clue what will happen, where the characters will go, how the story will evolve. Those are very challenging to write and more gut wrenching. Once Upon A Crush began with my conversations with friends who were hitting 30 or had just hit thirty and were still to get married. I found, that no matter how professionally accomplished they were, the pressure from family (and some internal pressure) to get married was immense. And finding true love and suitable partners was getting increasingly difficult. That was the crux of what initiated my writing this book. And of course, I was consciously trying to write a protagonist who was completely definitely not me, and Rayna De isn't me at all. Of course, we do have in common that we are both pretty laid back about our careers and have been stuck in dead end jobs, which for me was the dead end job which inspired Rayna's job in the book. Y: Thanks Kiran - and all the best for this book and future ones. May you keep rocking and rolling :)

About Kiran:

Kiran Manral has worked as a journalist before she quit to be full time mommy. Her blogs, www.thirtysixandcounting.wordpress.comand www.karmickids.blogspot.com, are both in Labnol's list of India's top blogs. She was a blogger at Tehelka Blogs on gender issues. She is also considered a 'social media star' on twitter by the TOI and IBN Live named her as among the 30 interesting Indian women to follow on twitter and among the top 10 Indian moms to follow on twitter for 2013.Post 26/11, she founded India Helps, a volunteer network to help disaster victims post 26/11 and has worked on longterm rehabilitation of 26/11 Mumbai terror attack victims and 13/7 Mumbai bomb blast victims, amongst others.She is part of core founding team behind CSAAM (www.csaawarenessmonth.com) and Violence Against Women Awareness Month (www.vawawareness.wordpress.com), two very well received social media awareness initiatives across twitter and the blogosphere.Her debut novel, The Reluctant Detective, was published by Westland in 2012.

A Brief Synopsis of 'Once Upon a Crush':

Rayna De, stuck in a dead end job with a boss from hell, zero love life and the big 3-O looming large on the immediate horizon, has started to panic a bit. No, make that panic a lot. Enter new object of lust in the office, Deven Ahuja, and Rayna is overpowered by inappropriate visions of Cupid aiming his arrows straight into her heart, with turtle doves doing their billing and cooing act in the backdrop.

Alas, Deven is completely out of Rayna’s league despite the contradictory messages he seems to be sending out, and is, as decreed by page three supplements of the city newspapers, the man in the life of the gorgeous, light eyed model turned actress Sharbari Raina.

As Rayna battles with her unseemly, going nowhere crush, shaky employment status and dithers about signing up for domesticity with the vetted by her parents, Sid Bose, of the multi zero pay package, the two and a half bedroom house in a suburban gated complex and the very cultured, respectable family, she discovers that life has its own plans….